CMTCarrie Underwood won her fifth Video of the Year trophy at the 2014 CMT Music Awards Wednesday night for “See You Again.” It was her third-straight win in that category. She took it last year for “Blown Away,” and in 2012 for “Good Girl.”
Florida Georgia Line welcomed Jason DeRulo and Luke Bryan to open the show with a mashup of “This Is How We Roll” and Jason’s song “Talk Dirty.” FGL and Luke even joined Jason and his crew for a dance breakdown. ZZ Top performed their hit, “La Grange,” at the top of that opening performance and later joined the entire crew for a sing-along of “This Is How We Roll.” The new version of “This Is How We Roll,” featuring Jason, was released to radio immediately after the performance.
The Band Perry won Group Video of the Year for “Done.” Breakthrough Video of the Year went to Cassadee Pope for “Wasting All These Tears.” She happily accepted the trophy from her mentor from The Voice, Blake Shelton. Blake won Male Video of the Year for his hilarious clip, “Doin’ What She Likes,” and later sang “Boys ‘Round Here” on the outdoor Pepsi stage.
Luke Bryan shared the CMT Performance of the Year trophy with Lionel Richie for their duet on “Oh No/All Night Long” from the 2013 CMT Artists of the Year concert. Luke also took the Collaborative Video of the Year category with Florida Georgia Line for “This Is How We Roll.” FGL won the Duo Video of the Year category for “Round Here” as well.
Miranda Lambert accepted Female Video of the Year for “Automatic” before teaming up with Carrie Underwood for a red-hot performance of “Somethin’ Bad.”
Kacey Musgraves and Lee Ann Womack performed “Livin’ on Love” in honor of Alan Jackson, who was given the CMT Impact Award for his 25 years of hit videos. Carrie Underwood presented the trophy to Alan, and he thanked CMT for playing his videos all these years.
Little Big Town premiered their new single, “Day Drinking,” wearing all-white on an all-white set with a full drum line backing them up. When the song went into a drum-and-whistle breakdown, paint began coming out of the drums when the drummers hit it, and dry paint engulfed the band. LBT was wet with paint but very happy at the end of the performance.
Hunter Hayes arranged a new, guitar version of John Legend‘s pop hit, “All of Me,” and joined John and Jennifer Nettles onstage as they performed the song as a duet. Hunter also got the crowd rocking his new single, “Tattoo.”
Keith Urban gave a solo performance of “Cop Car” from Nashville’s Bluebird Café, but halfway through the song, the Bluebird’s walls were rolled off to reveal Keith was actually performing in the arena. A barefoot Jake Owen took over the plaza at Bridgestone Arena to sing his summertime hit, “Beachin’.” Lady Antebellum‘s Hillary Scott gave off a brunette bombshell vibe for the group’s outdoor performance of “Bartender.”
Eric Church brought Lzzy Hale out to trade big, screaming vocals on “That’s Damn Rock & Roll” from his latest album, The Outsiders. Dierks Bentley recruited a crew of hot stewardesses to dance onstage as he sang “Drunk on a Plane,” and Brantley Gilbert brought a taste of his Let It Ride tour to the stage with “Bottoms Up.”
Danielle Bradbery, Tyler Farr, Thomas Rhett, Cole Swindell, Dan + Shay, David Nail and Brett Eldredge all performed snippets of their hits on the Nationwide Insurance stage throughout the night.
Kristen Bell returned for a third turn as host, but it was her first time helming the show solo. She had help from her celebrity pals Cheryl Hines and Malin Ackerman in the opening skit trying to find a new co-host to replace her previous sidekicks, Jason Aldean and Toby Keith. They introduced her to the co-host dating app, Hollr, a country version of Tindr, and it connected her with her husband, Dax Shepard, Tom Arnold and Sean Hayes as bad potential co-hosts. Malin and Cheryl ultimately convinced Kristen to go it alone.
As Kristen made her way to the stage, she got not-so-helpful advice from Lady Antebellum, Dierks Bentley and Alan Jackson. The camera then cut to Florida Georgia Line and Luke Bryan all fighting in an elevator in a spoof of Jay-Z and Solange Knowles‘ infamous elevator fight. FGL and Luke straightened up when they saw Kristen was about to get in the elevator, and Luke told her as he got off, “What happens in the elevator staying in the elevator.”
During the monologue, Kristen poked a little fun at Luke for falling off the stage at a concert last weekend, and Luke was then shown seated in the audience with yellow caution tape wrapped all around him.
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